


instead of falling, flying

by mapped



Category: Johnny's Entertainment, KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-16
Updated: 2010-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-19 02:57:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/196101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jin leaves for America. Kame rewinds. Written for the prompt "dawn to dusk".</p>
            </blockquote>





	instead of falling, flying

Outside, the sun is setting.

Inside, you are clinging to the dimming shreds of sunlight as your last threads of hope, however thin these threads may be. The dusk light makes his face dark and his expression more elusive. He sits, wringing his hands, and you watch his fingers, remembering them unzipping your jeans once upon a time, and it’s not quite a child-appropriate fairy tale yet it’s one full of love nevertheless. But a fairy tale is all it is, and it will never arrive at a happy ending. Your memories of him and you are dusty illustrations with fading colours that will never come to life again.

“Have you told the others?” you ask.

“No, not yet.”

“Why did you tell me first?” You don’t know what you want him to say. You don’t really want him to speak at all, since everything that comes out of his mouth seems to be prophetic of despair and loneliness.

He speaks anyway: “I always tell you everything first.”

“You should have got everyone together. We’re a group. We deserve to hear the news together, all of us at the same time, when the news is that one of our members has decided to leave us.”

“Why aren’t you glad I told you first?”

“ _Glad_? Are you mad, Akanishi? Of course I’m not going to be _glad_ no matter how you break the news to me. You think it’s some sort of _privilege_ to be the first one to hear it?”

He lowers his head a little, and you turn away, half-ashamed that you’re almost shouting at him, when he seems to genuinely think that he’s doing something right by telling you first. That’s the problem with him, really. He always seems so genuine, when he’s with you in private. Genuinely idiotic, genuinely afraid, genuinely close to tears. But when he’s in public, he hardly ever seems genuine anymore, not like the Jin many yesterdays ago, whose enthusiasm burned so bright he almost outshone the sun.

“I thought you would appreciate knowing that you’re the most important one to me,” he says, his voice so _genuinely_ raw.

“Not important enough for you to stay.” You didn’t mean to sound so accusatory and forlorn, but once you’ve said it, you really don’t regret it a bit.

“You know I--” he tries, but he can’t.

“Go tell the others.”

“This doesn’t mean I’m never coming back.”

“But it means you’re never staying. It means KAT-TUN is now missing a letter and no one knows how to pronounce it properly anymore.”

“You’re taking it.”

“Taking what?”

“The A. Kamenashi. The first two letters of KAT-TUN are the first two letters of your name.”

You flinch. It’s worse than you thought. At least taking out the A would mean that he wouldn’t be there anymore, but making the A _yours_ means that his absence is your burden. You are to become him, to console the fans after his departure by making yourself two people at the same time. “Oh great. So now you’re leaving us and still I’m being forced to recall that you haven’t really left, you’re still there in spirit as a part of us. A part of _me_. We all know how far that is from the truth, now.”

“It isn’t really.”

“Stop pretending we’re still like we used to be. You haven’t kissed me in a year.”

“It’s not like you have, either.” He doesn’t even sound aggressive. Just quiet and honest. You kind of stupidly expected him to kiss you, and now you feel like it’s snowing inside your chest, frost chilling your blood in disappointment. But he keeps talking: “Just because we’re not kissing doesn’t mean we’re not thinking about it all the time.”

You’re looking at his lips.

You laugh, and you want to say, _Why aren’t we actually kissing then, if neither of us can stop thinking about doing it?_ But you’re not sure whether he’ll know the answer. You don’t want to ask a question unless you know there’s going to be an answer.

“When’s your flight?” you ask instead, even though you already know. It’s better than an answerless question.

“In a few hours.” He checks his watch. “Four hours and a bit.”

“Better hurry up,” you say.

“Should you be there?”

“What?”

“When I tell the others. You said you wanted the whole group to be together.”

“No. I. Well, you’ve told me already. It doesn’t matter now. I have stuff to do.” You don’t. You have nothing to do. All you want to do is watch him leave, even though you know that it will destroy you. Go to the airport and send him off, gaze at the plane taking off to a faraway land until it becomes a speck of dust in the sky, a scratch of sand in your eye. “Go,” you say, and you wait for him to step towards the door, but he doesn’t move.

You want to give him a helpful shove in the right direction, but you just stare at him, gasping for your last breath of love, feeling it keenly in the depth of your lungs like a dying man would cherish his final gulp of air. Your hand appears to be acting of its own accord; it makes helpless motions in the space between, fingers twitching, grasping, in some pathetic attempt to draw him in for a hug, a kiss, but never reaching his shoulder, never touching the shadowed curve of skin under his jaw.

“What’s up with your hand?” he asks, and he’s right. You look silly.

In your mind you shout at your hand _stop! stop!_ until it goes still and hangs awkwardly for a moment halfway between the two of you, suspended in layers of complication and history and desire, and then you curl your fingers into a trembling fist and let it drop to your side, defeated and ashamed.

“You’d be happier over there, wouldn’t you?” you ask.

“Yes. I would. I told you. I feel like I belong there more.”

You are relieved. In the end, you’re still perfectly willing to sacrifice your own happiness for his.

“That’s good. Akanishi,” you whisper, but the syllables have never fit comfortably in your mouth. “Jin,” you say, louder, and that finally sounds like home. You want to say nothing but that name for the rest of your life, repeating it like a prayer for second chances, for forgiveness.

He blinks, and then his body seems to lean forward, closer to you, as if attracted by a sudden magnetic force generated by your saying his name, but not close enough. Your lips are still light-years away from meeting his. He smiles, all wrong and bitter, and you know that you are both caught in the river between the need to kiss and the kiss itself, never to swim to the other shore, but dangling dangerously in the rushing current, a second from drowning.

He turns a little; the light from the window drenches his profile in gold. Illuminated in the dying light of day, he is the most beautiful you’ve seen him in a long time. You memorise his features: his long lashes, the rise of his nose, the lips you crave. You make these features yours, so that when he’s gone, you can become him and let the A fall on your shoulders.

He walks away, and you close your eyes and listen to his footfalls. They make a soft noise, like a murmur of the goodbye neither of you have said.

You try to remember how you got here.

\---

You see him writing in his notebook during a break in the filming of the _Rescue_ PV. “Lyrics?” you ask, thinking about the first draft of __Kizuna__ that you’ve still got neatly folded in one of the drawers at home, after all these years.

“Yeah, I’m writing a song. Just had a flash of inspiration while we were dancing,” he says.

You look over. The page is covered in English. “Oh,” you say, feeling empty and unsure of what you were expecting.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know if you remember, but you used to write songs in Japanese.”

“Of course I remember.”

“I don’t understand half the stuff you write these days,” you say, laughing and sweeping a hand through your hair. “You used to write them for me, but not anymore.”

He frowns at you. But Koki slaps you on the shoulder, startling you. Break is over. Jin casually slings the fedora back on top of his head, turning it the right way round with his fingers on the rim in a sleek movement that goes straight to your heart. The lighting in the room makes it impossible to see his eyes when he’s wearing the fedora. You can’t tell whether he’s still annoyed.

Later on, when filming is over, you catch him before he leaves the building.

“I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to say-- Well. You know, I’m glad you’re finding your own style. You can keep writing songs in English if that’s what you want to do. It’s nothing to do with me.”

“You sound like my mother,” Jin says. “I don’t need your approval to write songs in any language. In fact, I don’t need your approval to do anything at all. So why do you feel the need to _give_ me approval?”

“That’s not what I meant. I just didn’t want to make you feel bad. I realise that it probably sounded like I was making you feel _obliged_ to write songs for me, which isn’t the case--”

“It’s not that I’ve stopped wanting to write songs for you,” he says. “I just stopped being able to find the words. In any language.” His eyes are soft. “So I’ve given up. I’m writing for myself now. It’s much less interesting, but at least it’s easier.”

You can’t find the words right now, either. You want to kiss him, but you hesitate a moment too long, and he’s talking again:

“I’m thinking about maybe doing a solo concert over in America someday. I feel like I fit in there more.”

He smiles at you.

It’s the smile that does it. You can lean in and kiss him, kiss that smile clean, kiss that smile dirty-- or you can say “Well, good luck with that, and I guess I should be going home.”

You choose the latter option, but your stupid mouth inserts another sentence in after that. “We’re not working out, are we?”

He blinks at you, and something shatters in his eyes. His mouth twists. He doesn’t shake his head. He doesn’t nod. But you know. He knows.

You go home. You never kiss him after that.

\---

He calls you at four in the morning. You don’t actually mind, but you pretend to be angry with him on the phone. “Just because it’s noon over there doesn’t mean it’s the same time over here, idiot. Have you forgotten I’m halfway across the world from you?”

Silence. Of course he hasn’t forgotten, and he doesn’t like being reminded. You don’t like reminding yourself, either.

“I assume you actually have a reason to wake me up at such a ridiculous hour,” you say.

“You’ll be awake in another hour, anyway. It’s hardly ridiculous.”

You can’t deny it. You wake up at five most mornings, whether work demands it or not. Sleep never feels like an important concept to you. He knows. You grip the sheets on your bed, twisting the fabric in your hand. “You didn’t call for just a normal chat.”

“Can’t I? Friends call for normal chats.”

You don’t know what to say to that. He’s insinuating something, but you don’t want to accept it, whatever it is. You _are_ friends. It’s because you’re friends that you’re not angry with him for calling you at four in the morning. It doesn’t matter what your sleeping schedule happens to be. Early morning phone calls are generally not welcome.

He sounds impossibly tired when he next speaks: “I’m coming back in two days.”

You swear that your heart pulls a disappearing act in the moments that follow, time stretching long and thin like ramen dough in a chef’s hands, without a single heartbeat to accompany it. Then you suck in a deep breath, and your heart is back, pumping manically to make up for the time it lost.

“Can we please try to make things okay again?” he asks, and you admire him so much in that instant, for daring to say something that’s always been burning at your throat and dancing on your tongue, but something that you never had the courage to voice.

“Of course,” you say, not knowing how the answer could ever be otherwise. _Yes, yes, yes_ is all you’ll ever be able to say to him. It’s been years but you still haven’t quite been able to stop feeling like you’re his puppy, trailing behind him and jumping up and down and running when he throws something and wagging your tail in a way that says _yes_ a thousand times over.

You know it’s not going to be as simple as saying “Of course”, but you’re willing to try. Both of you are willing to try. Surely that must count for something.

“Tell the others tomorrow,” he says. “Well. Today. In the morning, I mean.”

“You tell them yourself.”

“What, should I go call them now?”

“No!” You laugh, and it’s not easy yet, but you hope it’s going to get easier. “You know I’m the only one who’ll put up with you at four in the morning. Can’t you wait till this side of the world is actually awake?”

“Sure.”

“Are you sure you’ve perfected your English? No more car shrimp?”

“No more car shrimp,” he says seriously. “Maybe still a bit go club get drunk, though.” You’re laughing again. Both of you. It feels more and more natural. He adds, “Hey, get some more sleep before you go to work. It’s not healthy.”

“You’re the one who woke me up!”

“I’m sorry. I thought I would explode if I didn’t tell you soon. Now go back to bed.” He hangs up.

You lie back down and there isn’t a mattress underneath you, but only pure air. You’re floating. You’ve only felt like this a few times in your life-- really, _really_ felt that buoyancy, that lightness that permeates your entire body-- and oddly enough, all of those moments have had to do with Jin. You swallow a grin, and soak it in.

Barely a week later you’re learning lyrics to _Yorokobi no Uta_ , and then you’re filming the PV and singing “Aishiteru, aishiteru” at the top of your lungs with him right by your side, and everything feels okay. You call him “Jin” again, and you touch him even when people are looking, _especially_ when people are looking, like at the concert in Sendai when he comes out for the encore and he’s _back_ , and you touch him to make sure he’s really there: shoulder, arm, back, in front of thousands of people. “Jin,” you say. He’s yours. You want everyone to know.

When no one is looking, backstage, you thread your fingers together and steal kisses from him, pushing away the words for now and replacing them with touches. Everywhere. All of you. All of him.

You know the words will have to come eventually, but you don’t want them to, yet. You know what words inevitably lead to, with the two of you. They lead to arguments.

He glances at you in between kisses with a weariness in his eyes, and you know that he knows what you’re doing. But kisses are easy bliss for both of you. Words are fatal. You know which one you’d rather pick, and you suspect that he’d choose the same.

\---

“I want to expand my horizons,” he says to you, when the two of you stumble inside his apartment after a long day and you’re still fumbling for the light switch. “I told Johnny that I want to go to America for a while, to study. He said it was okay.”

His words plunge you into a sudden darkness, deeper and colder than the pitch black of the room.

“Wait. Now? You’re going to America now?” Your fingers land on the switch and hesitate. Light doesn’t seem to matter when the darkness is crushingly profound, worming under your skin and taking root inside your ribcage. But you’d rather see his expressions than not. So you flick the switch.

“In a few weeks,” he says, as if that makes a huge difference.

“That’s still _now_.” It comes out as a vicious growl. “How long?”

“I don’t know. As long as it takes.”

“You don’t think you’re going to come back completely fluent, do you?”

“I’m going to come back when I feel like I’ve had enough.”

“What if you never get to that point? What if you find out that you much prefer America to here and you never get enough of it? What then?”

“I’m _going_ to come back, Kame.” He’s rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand, like he’s trying to ease away an ache.

You glare at him. You’re not reassured by his words; the darkness hasn’t gone away. “You better. I mean, we just had our debut, _finally_ , half a year ago, and we’ve put in so much hard work to get there. So many years. This was so important to you. We’re important as a group.”

“Well, at least I didn’t go off and have my own debut before the group did!”

The shock paralyses you for a while, and then it wears off. “I can’t believe you’re bringing that up now. It doesn’t even _compare_ \--”

“Who are you to say it doesn’t? You didn’t feel what I feel.”

“It really wasn’t that big of a deal.”

“ _This_ isn’t that big of a deal. I’m _coming back_ , dammit.”

He looks at you. Really looks at you, quietly, his eyes all soft, like he’s about to lean in and kiss you.

You try to count his eyelashes.

All of a sudden, you just feel absolutely miserable, down to the core of your soul. The anger isn’t there. In fact, you’re not sure you were ever angry in the first place. You don’t want to cry, but your nose is turning sour.

“I’m just so _tired_ ,” you say. Your voice is ragged, worn, about to fall into pieces. _I don’t know how to cope_ , you want to say, _it’s going to be so difficult without you_ , but you won’t allow yourself to admit something like that. “I’m sorry.” He should be the one apologising, but you’ve always been better at apologies than he is.

“It’s because you never sleep right,” he says. A sad smile curves his lips. “We’re supposed to get eight hours of sleep a day, you know.”

You close your eyes against the tears, and you turn to leave, scared that he’ll see you cry. He doesn’t stop you.

He tells the rest of the group the next day. Somehow it surprises you that you were the first one he told. You’re not sure how to feel about that; if you were someone else, if you weren’t so good at _arguing_ with each other, you’d probably be happy that he told you first. But you’re you. You’re Kamenashi Kazuya, and you’re forever destined to get into stupid arguments with Akanishi Jin.

You respect that he wants to expand his horizons. You’re just jealous that you’ll never be as brave as him, risking everything you’ve worked so hard for, to pursue other dreams. But it’s not just brave, what he’s doing. It’s reckless. You care for the rest of the group. You’re not reckless. You have to be responsible, because _someone else_ doesn’t know the meaning of the word.

In the weeks that follow, the two of you don’t talk much. But after he leaves, the city is empty without him. You busy yourself with the new single that KAT-TUN’s releasing, and the drama that you’re starring in, but none of it takes your mind off him. The lyrics to _Bokura no Machi de_ plays on your lips, and echoes in the emptiness of the city as you walk its streets late at night. You wonder about belief, and approval, and understanding. You wonder about regret, and dreams, and unknown futures.

You wonder whether he’s suffering as much as you are.

One day you find your shaking hands dialling his number, and you go along with it. “Akanishi?” you whisper into the phone.

“Kame?”

You hang up straightaway. You really just wanted to hear his voice, and now you’ve heard it, you can pick yourself up and get on with the rest of your day. _Keep going_ , you say to yourself. _You can do this. He’ll be back in no time._

\---

The filming for _Real Face_ ends and you’ve barely walked ten metres when there’s a hand on your shoulder and you’re being pushed into a secluded corridor and pinned to a wall and he’s just breathing, exhilarated, on your neck, and you’re wondering whether he’s actually going to do anything at all when he says, “ _Finally_ ,” his voice hushed and full of joy, like a little kid opening his birthday present.

You don’t feel that amazed, but you’re probably just too ridiculously tired. You concentrate on the way his breath feels on your skin.

He kisses you, and you feel like melting into the wall behind your back.

When he lets go, you say, “We’d better be more careful now that we’re finally debuting. People actually care about who we might be dating, now. It would be a scandal if they caught us.”

You’re only joking. Maybe. Or maybe not.

But he smiles, anyway, and it’s all right.

\---

“Look, it’s not my fault I had to debut before the rest of the group. It’s not like I wanted that to happen. Stop being angry at me.”

“It’s not the fact that you debuted earlier than us!”

“Then _what_ is it?”

“ _Kizuna_. It should have been _our_ debut, the two of us together. It’s _our_ song. I don’t understand why we couldn’t have done something like this for Gokusen 2. Instead you had to run off and do this with Pi, and of course I’m not angry with him, because he’s my best friend, but I have to be angry at someone and I just-- you wrote it for _me_ , Kame. It doesn’t belong on Shuuji and Akira’s CD. It’s Ryu and Hayato’s. And. Well. I _am_ angry that you debuted earlier than us, but that’s not the main issue.”

“Jin.” You step closer. “I’m sorry that it happened, but it doesn’t change the fact that _Kizuna_ ’s still for you, and we’re going to debut as a group, all six of us together, very soon.” You pull him into a hug, and you feel him soften in your arms. You run your fingers through his hair, and kiss the place where his ear curves into his jawline, and then you’re singing a few lines of _Kizuna_ , quietly so that you’re really whispering the words to him. Making sure he understands.

This time, this place, this bond will never disappear.

You hardly ever argue with him. And you’ve already discovered that you really don’t like doing it. And by “don’t like”, you mean _loathe_.

\---

You’ve had a long day, and it’s been more terrible than you would have expected a trip to Okinawa to be, but now that the day is over and you’re finally allowed to rest, it doesn’t seem all that bad.

Despite your earlier protests, you’re really kind of glad that Jin won instead of you. If it had been you, you would have gone to Hokkaido, and you’re quite sure you won’t be lying next to him in a tiny tent, both of you naked from the waist up, his hand on your arm. The ground isn’t comfortable, and it’s a bit hot and stuffy, but you don’t mind.

He’s turned on a torch and put it in between the two of you.

He’s looking at you. There are no cameras in here anymore. He’s looking into your eyes and his gaze slides down and you can feel him looking at your lips and your neck and your bare shoulders where the blanket doesn’t cover them.

You can smell the sea salt. On him, on you. You’ve bathed in the sea, after all.

You think about the horrible lunch you had, comprised entirely of bitter melon. You think about walking around in the heat with him wearing T-shirts promoting Tsubasa and talking to girls who did not know your names. You think about the ridiculous shoes that you had to wear and how those made your feet hurt. You think about being photographed with the white snake and both of you squirming and squealing, terrified even though the white snake’s supposed to bring good luck instead of killing you.

You think about him.

You kiss him first. It’s dizzyingly sweet, the way he laughs into the kiss, surprised. Happy. His hand finds yours. After a few timid kisses and giggles, he smiles at you and says goodnight, and turns off the torch.

You’re very tired, but you can’t sleep. You keep squeezing the hand in yours to make sure it’s real. The first few times, he mutters something that sounds like “Kazu”. Then he starts to snore.

You only really snatch a few hours' sleep before you feel the light seeping in through the thin material of the tent. You sit up and unzip the front of the tent a bit to look outside. Your movement wakes Jin. He groans and turns away.

“The sun’s going to rise soon. Don’t you want to watch it?” you ask.

He mumbles no. You laugh, and fall back onto the ground, and bury your nose in his hair, inhaling.

Inside your head, words are falling together. This time, this place, this bond will never disappear. You’re convinced that they’ll make great lyrics, and one day you’ll have enough to write a whole song around this one line, and it will be completely about Jin. Jin, who calls you Kazu-chan, who likes you even though a lot of other people in the jimusho think you’re ugly, who makes you feel more beautiful and confident than you’ve ever felt in your life. You find his hand again, and hold onto it tighter than before.

Outside, the sun is rising, and it casts his face in a brilliant light.


End file.
